


Hangman's Wages

by Ryo Hoshi (Hoshi_Ryo)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Anachronic Order, Apocalypse, Fluff and Angst, Human/Troll Society, Monsters, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Game(s), episodic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-09 18:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoshi_Ryo/pseuds/Ryo%20Hoshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the game, the surviving players found themselves with a nice new universe, with a new Earth (which looks <i>mostly</i> like Earth) shared by trolls and humans.  Things were relatively nice for a few years, even as they drifted apart, and then the apocalypse happened in the form of rather too many monsters during an attempt to reunite.</p><p>Welcome to the fluffy side of the apocalypse, where the only person freaking out much is Karkat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've no idea how to tag Dave unintentionally abusing the fact that death by monster is getting counted as Stupid instead of Heroic or Just; Dave just has a problem, and really this is the fluffy side of an apocalypse.
> 
> This is a limited, not omniscient third-person point of view. Bottom line is, if character whose perspective is being used doesn't know it then it isn't going to be in here…and about some things John is…well…oblivious.

John shifted, yawning. The nest the trolls in their group had put together in the cave shelter was surprisingly comfortable, especially compared to the world outside which had monsters in rather greater abundance than either species thought desirable. Or perhaps it was greater virulence, it had been a bit hard to tell from Karkat's rants which…

Karkat had not ranted in a while, though. They would worry a bit more except honestly rants were prone to draw the monsters' attention and they were not properly armed to fight the damn things. Wind and time and spacey powers were neat and all but Dave was rather definite that no, he was _not_ intentionally trying to find out if 'huge toothy lizard noms' was going to count as a heroic or just death. It had not been the first time and, as Dave had said just before the _second_ time he'd been eaten, they chew.

Terezi had whapped him with her cane before he managed to get himself eaten for a third time in a row.

As a group, though, they were supremely well-suited for a fighting retreat. If they'd had a clue just how widespread the sudden monster infestation was, Jade could have happily zapped them somewhere nicely monster-free and they'd be done with this but that would have required knowing of some place that was _not_ well-provided with monsters.

Though, really, Jade was the best when it came to using her powers effectively against the monsters. The monsters tended to attack en mass, too many for his Windy Thing to do too much (though he could easily dodge and lure them into traps) and Dave just tended to get himself munched, though he was making a good effort at keeping Dave Prime from being munched (often). Jade could teleport a bunch away, or shrink some, though the first mostly just bought time to retreat and the latter had actually been a horrible idea because miniature monsters.

They all tried to ignore the signs that the survivors from _that_ experiment were not only breeding but proving quite successful.

The end result was that they were definitely surviving, they just were doing it more in a slow annoying slog for the humans. For the trolls it was a bit more than merely annoying, but John had just grabbed Karkat and Terezi had looked a touch embarrassed when they'd finally been able to stop for a bit outside of the chaos and realized hey, they had two trolls and neither was Kanaya. They had a bit more experience on the monster fighting end, though the looks on their faces when Dave and Jade had cheerfully informed them that they just killed a creature that looked to maybe be a match for one humanity ages ago decided to off…

Apparently the idea that a planet might lack monsters for a reason other than 'never had any' was alien to the two.

The worst part really was the nights, which tended to have some of the nastier monsters wandering and this time of year were just plain cold, especially for the trolls—Alternia's nights had been warm, always, by the standards of pretty much anywhere not tropical on Earth, and by Dave's reckoning Black Friday would have been a thing a couple days ago if there wasn't a monster infestation.

They had celebrated by looting a big box store, one Terezi had liked ( _all_ the bright red!) and Karkat found the sign out front confusing. He had been a shut-in for the brief time after they'd made it here and before monsters were a big and not at all imaginary thing, and John guessed logos were to trolls kinda like signs?

There had been food (some of it even not rotting) and camping junk and blankets. They grabbed what was useful and tried not to think too hard about the fact that they looked to be the first people to hit the place for supplies.

Instead they had gone to the jewelry department. Dave had gotten his ears pierced not too long after they had finished the Game, so they knew those would stick (and from looting the Dead Dave corpses they were getting a good stock of ironic diamond studs) but they knew too that Dave was going to be switching one out for a red stud soon and it was really _really_ best to try to avoid the bootstrap paradox. The bootstrap paradox made Jade and Terezi sad and Karkat weird and John was pretty sure he was all for fewer Dead Daves.

That had gone kinda well, too, except…

Karkat had found a bunch of zodiac jewelry. Terezi had been thrilled (and Dave gained a necklace that would make other humans think he was born in October) but Karkat had gone to pieces over a Capricorn pendant. John had ended up cuddling him with Jade in a pile made from pillows, or rather the remains of them.

They had left that day, a Cancer pendant slipped on him by a weirdly insistent Karkat, much to Terezi's amusement, the Capricorn pendant on Karkat and one of Dave's ears looking bruised and a bit teal.

The mystery of the last was solved soon after and Dave made the most fascinating noises when Terezi failed to resist the lure of the red ear stud.

They'd carefully _not_ pushed Karkat on why he'd been so miserable over Gamzee's sign, just like how Dave had made it clear that none of them were to inquire any deeper than Terezi offered to on why she had absolutely no regrets currently about being not blind anymore. Given how much of a douche Dave was rather too often now—John was not exactly confident that Dave's account of his murderclown-induced breakup with Terezi was accurate—it was easy enough to accept a request he made that showed a glimmer of him actually remembering that being cool and ironic did not require being the biggest and douchiest hipster around.

Though John had to admit that might simply be due to Dave being the _only_ hipster around, right now.

He missed Karkat's rants, though. Karkat would have explained why he had pressed that pendant on him, but really Karkat hadn't said much since the first time they'd gotten enough of a break to do more than collapse and sleep. They had taken turns washing off blood and gore, most of it the bright red of the monsters, though Dave insisted he'd seen trollish purple under all the layers of red on Karkat's clothes, before they'd been declared kindling.

It had been while they had been trading information over the fire, eating roast monster kabobs, that Karkat had gone weird and not-ranty after Jade had mentioned that the monsters seemed really attracted to loud voices. It was really pitiful, though it didn't seem to keep Dave from occasionally ending up in a fight with Karkat that went sexual. It was actually kinda funny how Dave kept insisting that he didn't get kismesissitude even though he was definitely managing the sex with Karkat, according to the troll contingent, and he was really hot when Karkat won the initial fight.

Tonight, though, they had been tired and hungry and exhausted when they had found the cave and it was only cuddles.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terezi and Dave catch their bearings after the initial arrival of the monsters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some conjecture is involved on Alternian history, both of the sociopolitical and technological sorts, due to the state of troll society on this new Earth; terms are looted liberally from the Classical era, as well as aspects of other things.
> 
> Also, for the record: the smells described are all ones I’ve experienced. Some of them I really would prefer never to smell again.

The initial onslaught of monsters had hit while they were having a reunion. Their new world, a version of Earth populated by trolls and humans for its entire history, had been distracting enough, and the mess of the days before their victory had carried over. They had not really stuck together.

Terezi rarely talked to Karkat, even less so to Dave. Karkat had simply dropped off the radar—John, who seemed to talk to him most, had mentioned a shack under a bridge—and Dave had burned bridges through sheer douchebaggery. She’d ended up good friends with Jade over that, even a bit of flirting, red or black, she wasn’t sure. Dave had insisted humans didn’t do black, but the cases she saw crossing desks while she worked part-time in law offices, learning her options in this brave new world, suggested it was more that humans merely didn’t like admitting it. (Though it looked like humans in this new universe were willing to call a spade a spade, and it was more something about humans that made it best for them to leave that quadrant unfilled.)

If they had not been left a mess of shattered relationships, would they have spotted warnings that this was going to happen? Terezi thought Sollux still got some warning of impending doom, but he was nearly as reclusive as Karkat had become. Probably didn’t help that troll society had gotten blown back to the pre-Unification days and about all the standard schoolfeeding on Alternia could be bothered to say about them was that it was horrible and everybody ought to be grateful to Her Imperial Condescension for Her hard work.

As a permanent metic, with no way to prove she was a hatched citizen of any polis, her sign on no polis’s Jade Rolls, and no chance of this changing for herself, only for a future Descendant should she contribute to the slurry of a given state’s Mother Grub…Terezi was not sure if she could honestly say that this had not actually been one of the few indisputably good things done by Her. If nothing else, Karkat was proof that it was possible to slip a sign and a linage-name onto the Jade Rolls of the Empire…

Here, though, even the longest of the Jade Rolls of a given polis was not too long for the older Jadebloods to have memorized. The Rolls served mostly as a tool for teaching the younger ones the linages of those who were hatched citizens, by name and sign, to serve as legal proof of this, and as one of the things that would be removed should the polis be defeated or destroyed.

On a personal level, though, it meant that she could never be a legislacerator. For all her skill and talent, she was simply not a hatched citizen of any troll state. Humans, though…humans did not require their version of legislacerators to be citizens, and maybe, just maybe, it would be enough?

It did not, perhaps, hurt that for now she could get brief jobs to try out the various specialties within human legal practice. She was considered old enough to have jobs and it was a bit easier to be a troll without polis citizenship among humans, as long as she could stay politely vague about the unfortunate fact that she _was_ functionally stateless.

One thing in favor of sudden apocalyptic invasions of monsters: she was spared having to figure out what exactly her options were when she no longer could stay vague about being not a citizen of anywhere.

However, the automatic scattering when the attack started, interestingly enough instinctual in both humans and trolls, had meant that she was stuck with Dave and…

It was large, lusus-white and the smell of it was hole in the world, edged with burnt sickly sweetness. Terezi shifted away, farther into the supply storage alcove she and Dave had retreated to, pausing only to pull Dave along with her. There was something _off_ about the long snake-fish-worm _thing_ , and for all that Dave probably could see it better than her he didn’t seem to have a feel for monsters on the same level as trolls.

(Besides he’d always been inclined to charge ahead, trusting the indifferent universe to not decide that he had earned a well-deserved removal from the gene pool. It had once not been quite as annoying, just had to keep reminding him, no Doomed Daves, dead Daves were the enemy, but.)

It shifted, and Terezi revised her original judgement. She had always loved dragons, even once on this new Earth where dragons a thing of myth and legend, except _that_ was a wyrm.

Even on Alternia they had been a thing of daymares, creatures that normally dwelled deep beneath the surface, occasionally slipping up to feed, rumored to be why occasionally a seadweller went silent for no known other reason. Sometimes they featured in particularly bad fiction as a seadweller lusus, and legends passed from wiggler to wiggler of having some acquaintance who knew a troll who had run into a troll with a wyrm for a lusus.

Most on Alternia had considered wyrms entirely mythical—the idea of a lusus that was not only dangerous enough to take out adults, but one capable of doing in even seadwellers with impunity… Gl’bgolyb was supposed to be unique there, as well as in Her blood.

As Terezi and Dave watched, a troll attempted to cross the large, open hall the wyrm had settled in.

The large white head lifted, nostrils flaring, no movement of the eyes because there were none (just slight dimples) and suddenly the head shot forward, both sets of jaws gaping.

The troll managed to nick it: as its head pulled back there was splatter of fuschia blood within the larger pool of violet.

She found herself missing Eridan. Whatever else could be said for him, when something _really_ needed killing and it wasn’t an easy kill, Eridan was your best possible ally, it was him.

Her swordcane and Dave’s sometimes-broken blade were not suited to long-range combat. They had a minor advantage over other humans and trolls, in that while strife specibi and fetch modi were not native to this new world, they had been among the swag that all players got to carry over. Dave’s time tables worked, even, but it was best to be subtle with such. The basilinnes and the polemarches of the various poleis kept a keen dragon-eyed watch for special talents, and Terezi did not feel that certain that they would let the minor fact that Dave was human stand in their way when it came to trying to secure his abilities for themselves.

That really didn’t serve them very well when the best option was to snipe the fucker until it was deader than dead.

“…Did you see if Jade went this direction too?”

Terezi shifted her shoulders slightly. “I think she and John went up.” She had a rifle, and would likely have helped. It wouldn’t be Ahab’s Crosshairs, though, and from all the stories most things simply weren’t going to pierce the hide of a wyrm. The troll it’d just eaten had only drawn blood by the sheer luck of cutting the inside of the wyrm’s…

The Violetblood’s blade may not have been able to slice the wyrm’s hide, she could even catch the faint whiff of burnt metal inside the swirl of acidic-void of hide, swampy rotting-death poison breeze of wyrm-breath. But the wyrm’s insides weren’t as tough…

It would probably be a heroic death, though. Certainly it’d be a nasty one, pulled down its throat by cholerbear-trap jaws, alive, just to get the chance to stab through the wyrm’s viscera…

…She couldn’t quite ask Dave Prime to do that.

She could, easily, if she was going to be truthful. She could see how to convince him, the words that would get him to sacrifice himself, and it’d work and she’d be down a wyrm and a douche of an ex except she remembered when Dave had still been a coolkid and she had been so, so flushed for him and…she knew she would, if she did, regret it. He’d not be able to keep his cool facade through it, the price of making the death-blow, and his screams of pain would be…

…A doomed Dave would not be as much a problem, but they didn’t have one.

 

It was not long before they did. His sunglasses were gone, and he didn’t have any trace of the cut Dave had gotten when he’d made that split-second decision to go ahead risk the broken glass instead of assuming Terezi would be able to make the mad scramble to better cover without help.

Terezi suspected he’d have a scar.

The doomed Dave had kissed her, too. It was not like any of the kisses she’d had before, except maybe during her fling with Gamzee. But those had been black as coffee, and this was as sweet as cherry syrup. Dave had never quite kissed with the same passion…

(Later, but not much, she had another such kiss with Dave, this time Dave Prime, their bodies pressed together, hands slipping under clothes.)

She saw enough to know why, in his timeline she had died, and Terezi knew that Dave was less wavering in his feelings for her than Karkat. Their breakup had been for other reasons, and maybe he’d admit eventually those other reasons were less his inability to cope with her romantic tendencies and more him confusing being a douche with being cool.

She had not had much trouble telling him her plan—she had the feeling he wanted this, caught in her Sight (she might not be a fully-realized Seer but time had taught her that she was closer than she had once thought) the reason why, and known his regrets and why he had come back.

Why he had arrived in time to make sure Dave Prime had risked the broken glass anyway.

He was going to die, and guilt and the simple inevitable fate of any from a doomed timeline drew him, and she was fine with it. She hoped he would be able to find his Terezi if there were still dreambubbles or if some other, newer afterlife had taken their place. She would plan to ask Aradia if she thought Aradia would give a straight answer.

She did think that she would forgive him.

#### Coda

He had hoped after she had died that the Dream Bubbles still existed, even this long after they had finished the game. He had just…assumed she’d make it over the glass fast enough, only thinking to turn back and look in time for teal blood to splash over him and her cry of pain.

He had thought she would be…

Dooming the timeline was easy. Go back, keep him from making the stupid, _stupid_ mistake…

His plan had been just to warn his prime version to be not…to not let Terezi get killed, and just let himself suffer the normal fate of a doomed timeline version. He hadn’t any plans, really, and it was only what he deserved.

This Terezi had grinned at him, and offered him a way to redeem himself and get revenge for his Terezi’s death.

He recognized this memory instantly: the last time he had tried to take Terezi out on a date, the particular legal office she had been working in, the flowering cherry tree outside the window placing the date exactly even if he hadn’t still the senses of a Time player. There was a can of a redpop sitting on her desk, a couple files and several books sitting at the opposite end from her laptop with its custom red dragon skin.

She was wearing the ruby earrings he had sent her. (Before, in the real version, she had simply handed them back, box unopened.)

“…Terezi?”

White, dead eyes shifted from the screen to his. “Hey, coolkid,” she said with a grin.

He hesitated only a little before pocketing his sunglasses. “I’m sorry, Terezi.”

“’S cool. I saw what you did.” There was the soft sound that told him she’d saved the file she was working on, and she gently closed the laptop. “Wanna see if we can have that date you’d planned?”

Of course he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will take into account what people are curious about when picking the next chapter, so do feel free to ask.
> 
> Thanks goes to Troodon, who's betaing this for me now.


End file.
